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The Flavors of Home: A Guide to Wild Edible Plants of the San Francisco Bay Area
A delightful guide, field book, cookbook, and botanical essay rolled into one, _The Flavors of Home_ is ideal for both experienced forages and casual hikers.
240 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 1990
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
September 14, 2019
As a plant geek, I like reading about other people's relationships with plants, especially the same species I also have relationships with. Author Margit Roos-Collins doesn't disappoint in her account of edible plants in the San Francisco Bay Area. It's part memoir, part field guide. The organization is somewhat whimsical; there are chapters on edible flowers, berries, nuts, seaweeds (not technically plants!), mushrooms (actually more closely related to animals than plants), and my favorite: "Greens I have given up trying to like." Tell it like it is.
This is a warm, earthy, and wise account of living the plant life. I really like the author's emphasis on respectful and knowledgeable foraging. She writes, "With over six million potential foragers living in or visiting this area, we have to use some common sense. This is a book about the joys of tasting nature, not of devouring it." And accordingly, she emphasizes edible weeds - radish, dock, purslane, nasturtium, fennel, Himalayan blackberry - and native plants that are either extremely common, such as miner's lettuce, or produce abundant fruit, like blue elderberries.
I find Roos-Collins's asides more interesting than the basic botany and identification information she provides. In the account on mugwort, she writes that it is good for dreaming and details the dreams she and a friend had when they slept with a few leaves under their pillows. She also provides detailed directions for making acorn porridge and kelp cake ("The whole idea seemed so alien that I waited two weeks rather than four days, by which time the refrigerated kelp was becoming decidedly limp"), a section on poisonous plants to avoid, and even a bit of ecology - apparently pickleweed grows more robustly outside its usual salt marsh. There's a little of this and that, and it adds up to an entertaining and informative read with an author I'd enjoy hiking with.
Caveats: The Flavors of Home is a better memoir than field guide. The illustrations range from serviceable to wtf - it has the dubious honor of featuring possibly the worst illustration of a chanterelle ever published, and many of its other illustrations do not capture the gestalt of a plant. Do not expect to be able to use this book in the field. Taxonomic names have not been updated in this new edition (why??), although there's a list at the very end of changed names. There's also a bizarre claim that one of the iceplants (Carpobrotus chilensis) is native, which it definitely isn't.
(I also disagree with some of the author's assessments of palatability. She includes dog fennel in her section on teas, but I think this plant smells remarkably like a moldy towel that a stray dog has rolled around in.)
Still, I wish this were a book that all hipster forest bathers would read before they head out to the woods to make tea out of the first plant that speaks to them, wonder vaguely what poison oak looks like, and find their true selves in nature - whatever the hell that means.
This is a warm, earthy, and wise account of living the plant life. I really like the author's emphasis on respectful and knowledgeable foraging. She writes, "With over six million potential foragers living in or visiting this area, we have to use some common sense. This is a book about the joys of tasting nature, not of devouring it." And accordingly, she emphasizes edible weeds - radish, dock, purslane, nasturtium, fennel, Himalayan blackberry - and native plants that are either extremely common, such as miner's lettuce, or produce abundant fruit, like blue elderberries.
I find Roos-Collins's asides more interesting than the basic botany and identification information she provides. In the account on mugwort, she writes that it is good for dreaming and details the dreams she and a friend had when they slept with a few leaves under their pillows. She also provides detailed directions for making acorn porridge and kelp cake ("The whole idea seemed so alien that I waited two weeks rather than four days, by which time the refrigerated kelp was becoming decidedly limp"), a section on poisonous plants to avoid, and even a bit of ecology - apparently pickleweed grows more robustly outside its usual salt marsh. There's a little of this and that, and it adds up to an entertaining and informative read with an author I'd enjoy hiking with.
Caveats: The Flavors of Home is a better memoir than field guide. The illustrations range from serviceable to wtf - it has the dubious honor of featuring possibly the worst illustration of a chanterelle ever published, and many of its other illustrations do not capture the gestalt of a plant. Do not expect to be able to use this book in the field. Taxonomic names have not been updated in this new edition (why??), although there's a list at the very end of changed names. There's also a bizarre claim that one of the iceplants (Carpobrotus chilensis) is native, which it definitely isn't.
(I also disagree with some of the author's assessments of palatability. She includes dog fennel in her section on teas, but I think this plant smells remarkably like a moldy towel that a stray dog has rolled around in.)
Still, I wish this were a book that all hipster forest bathers would read before they head out to the woods to make tea out of the first plant that speaks to them, wonder vaguely what poison oak looks like, and find their true selves in nature - whatever the hell that means.
July 18, 2020
I am on the prowl for information on how our local Native Californians used native plants. I can take this on hikes to remind myself what’s edible. I love how the book is organized, with each plant listed in the Table of Contents and a good Index.
This book is a combination background, ethnobotanic/location/use guide. Since she provides tips about where to find each plant, I will refer to this when selecting local native edibles for my yard. Yes, you cannot identify a plant from this book. This book fills a niche. Recommended by M. Kat Anderson. Good enough for me! Well done.
This book is a combination background, ethnobotanic/location/use guide. Since she provides tips about where to find each plant, I will refer to this when selecting local native edibles for my yard. Yes, you cannot identify a plant from this book. This book fills a niche. Recommended by M. Kat Anderson. Good enough for me! Well done.
May 1, 2022
The second best foraging book I've found, after checking out my library's entire collection. Slightly dated but phenomenal introduction to foraging in the broader SF bay area. I'm tempted to classify this as half-memoir and half-manual - the author liberally sprinkles in stories about her experiences with specific plants, and her sense of humor and sensory descriptions are a major highlight of the book. Because this is an older book (pub 1990), it doesn't have glossy full color photos, but the verbal descriptions and sketches are easily supplementable with Google searches.
April 28, 2019
Full of poor drawings that do not aid in identification and the write-ups aren't much better. The author spends the most time regurgitating scientific descriptions and talking about culinary uses.
April 21, 2023
Some readers will find the rhapsodies exasperating, but they are sprinkled judiciously among a lot of useful information. The whole book is refreshing and really made me look at my neighborhood with new eyes.
October 19, 2014
My favorite reference for wild edibles in the Bay Area. I wish the drawings were more clear, and I wouldn't recommend using this without also having a field guide with color photographs, but the information is awesome.
I love her ability to talk about the *actual taste* of the plants without getting all "everything in nature is delicious", because really some things are NOT delicious. She has a section about "edible but not incredible" plants. Good to know.
I love her ability to talk about the *actual taste* of the plants without getting all "everything in nature is delicious", because really some things are NOT delicious. She has a section about "edible but not incredible" plants. Good to know.
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April 28, 2016Tonight I heard the author speak about the revised edition & now I'm eager to learn more about edible wild plants in my own backyard.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews